John Ruwitch
John Ruwitch is a correspondent with NPR's international desk. He covers Chinese affairs.
Ruwitch joined NPR in early 2020, and has since chronicled the tectonic shift in America's relations with China, from hopeful engagement to suspicion-fueled competition. He's also reported on a range of other issues, including Beijing's pressure campaign on Taiwan, Hong Kong's National Security Law, Asian-Americans considering guns for self-defense in the face of rising violence and a herd of elephants roaming in the Chinese countryside in search of a home.
Ruwitch joined NPR after more than 19 years with Reuters in Asia, the last eight of which were in Shanghai. There, he first covered a broad beat that took him as far afield as the China-North Korea border and the edge of the South China Sea. Later, he led a team that covered business and financial markets in the world's second biggest economy. Ruwitch has also had postings in Hanoi, Hong Kong and Beijing, reporting on anti-corruption campaigns, elite Communist politics, labor disputes, human rights, currency devaluations, earthquakes, snowstorms, Olympic badminton and everything in between.
Ruwitch studied history at U.C. Santa Cruz and got a master's in Regional Studies East Asia from Harvard. He speaks Mandarin and Vietnamese.
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Rather than clarify its political intentions, the U.S. has stayed vague about Taiwan for four decades to maintain peace. But there are signs of a shift toward more clarity these days.
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One of China's biggest tennis stars accused a former Vice Premier of sexual assault — then disappeared from public view. The Women's Tennis Association is calling on China to prove she's OK.
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Monday night, President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will hold a virtual summit. It will be their first formal meeting since Biden became president.
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In China, leadership has concluded a four-day meeting that endorsed Xi Jinping's vision for the country and signed off on a reassessment of the party's 100-year history.
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"If she does not make it past the coming winter, I hope the world will remember her as she once was," Zhang Zhan's brother said. She posted videos of Wuhan in the early days of the pandemic. -
While China tries to stamp out COVID-19 infections as soon as they pop up, the U.S. has a much more laissez-faire approach of learning to live with the virus, even if it means a thousand deaths a day.
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China's leadership is poised to approve a change that sets the stage for Xi Jinping to continue to rule after his second term as Communist Party boss ends next year.
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Microsoft says it's pulling the plug on LinkedIn in China. The decision concludes a seven-year run, at the end of which it became too tough an environment for the networking service to keep operating.
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Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Midwestern farmers and Wall Street investors all see China as a business opportunity. Yet in Washington, China is first and foremost a security threat.
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With the U.S. out of Afghanistan and the Taliban in charge, Pakistan hopes its ties with Washington can shift in a new direction. But for now, relations will be driven by anti-terrorism.
